The Daily Express

Typical Daily Express headline

I was reading the Daily Express yesterday. Bear with me. The front cover grabbed my attention as I served a customer. "Call up new teen army," screamed the headline, juxtaposed with 2 pictures - one of a Vicky Pollard-like chav (banned from her estate after 111 complaints!), and the other of a middle class girl serving her middle class gran a cup of tea, both with beaming smiles. The implication the Express seemed to be making was that "this" (Vicky Pollard) could be turned into "this" (beaming middle class girl). All that it would require is a scheme whereby youngsters are forced into "voluntary work" before being allowed a proper job. Forced voluntary work. I'd say it's oxymoronic, but that's redundant next to the fact that it's just plain fucking moronic.

The subtitle read, "Making ALL young people serve their community will help Britain be great again". I couldn't stop myself: I picked up the paper and started reading. I envisaged all the middle-aged twats reading it too, orgasming at the idea of teaching the youth of today some respect - or whatever passes as an orgasm for them (a bubbly fart perhaps). I was on the kiosk, and as people came up to me, I did feel somewhat embarrassed that I was near a copy of the Express. I even considered explaining myself to someone who came up with a copy of the Guardian.

This campaign of forced labour was another "Daily Express Crusade". I think they have a special department at the Express offices where they just sit a bunch of menopausal Women's Institute members down and write lists of things they hate, then select one at random and start a CRUSADE against it. Quick, gather up your armour, saddle your steed, and let's go take the Jerusalem of Decency back from the Nasty Little Muslims of Youth. Last week's noble cause was the obliteration of sheer evil - taking the form of young people wearing hooded tops. A complete ban was called for, because hooded tops are actually autonomous and take control of the wearer, forcing him or her to commit petty crimes. All people wearing hooded tops are criminals or asylum seekers! Chain them to the town walls and pelt them with rancid tomatoes!

The Express thought they had the Government's backing because of an en passant comment some low-level Home Office minister had made saying that a scheme "would be a good idea". Oh, a good idea, that's wonderful, if it's a good idea we should do it! Never mind the practicalities of finding work placements for 1 million plus disgruntled teenagers, the majority of whom would rather slowly starve to death than do something for someone else. Never mind worrying about what to do with the youths who refuse to submit to such a scheme. All the teething problems will sort themselves out, and Britain will suddenly flourish. After all, we're only the 6th richest country in the world*. Surely we could do better than that! If we force our young people into community work our GDP is sure to skyrocket, NHS waiting lists will be cut in half, and life expectancy will increase by 5 years. Britain will become the utopian society that it used to be in the good old days before black people and other nastiness!

The real reasoning behind the scheme is that teaching (read: forcing) young people to help their communities will cut anti social behaviour. I can't really attack the logic of the Express, or the few others that support it, because there IS no logic to attack. It's fucking ridiculous. How can you even contemplate forcing someone to be helpful? Pro social behaviour is based almost entirely on individual differences - personality. If it's not in you to do something for nothing, you're not going to do it, simple as. That's all I'm able to say. Hopefully the argument destroys itself.

As I read the proposals I become overwhelmed with an increasing sense of déjà vu. From where was the concept of forcing young people into a program with set ideologies familiar? And then it hit me.

THE HITLER-JUGEND of 1930's Nazi Germany of course! Yes, if you were lucky enough to be a German boy when Hitler was doing things his way at the Reichstag, you got the honour of (forced) membership of this excellent organisation. It was like the Boy Scouts, but instead of learning how to tie knots or put up tents, you got taught the fine arts of anti-Semitism and how to kill enemies of the Fatherland. And of course, if you didn't want to be a young Nazi, then you had a simple alternative: execution*. Daily Express take note. What a good idea it would be to take a model of youth education from the government that gave us both World War Two and the holocaust. Where do I sign?

Apparently, forcing the youth into voluntary work is advantageous in advanced nations such as, urm, Croatia, where it's an alternative to national service (national service, now there's a good idea!). In America, antisocial youths are chain ganged and forced to do embarrassing menial tasks. Great idea: piss off the pissed off kids even more! I bet that works. I bet the vast majority don't become even more disheartened and go out and re-offend.

The Daily Express graduated from "fucking stupid" to "unbelievably fucking stupid" when they published this bullshit. I'd like to congratulate them on a feat only previously accomplished by the Daily Mail, and just hope beyond hope that their writers are merely pandering to a superlatively ignorant readership rather than actually being serious.

New: In the Queen's speech Tony Blair said he wanted to create a new "culture of respect". How will he do this? How about forcing families to eat meals together? Nice idea. I suppose everyone is supposed to drop everything so they can eat their meals with their yobbish kids - let's stop women going out to work too, whilst we're at it; they should be staying at home to cook the meals. It'll be just like the 50's again! Eat your dinner with your kids or else what? You get an ASBO? Sod off Blair. Pass the broccoli.

I feel the subtitle is redundant. Other than that, nice work, I'm sure the Express are honoured to be linked to Hitler Youth

Attempted - 21/5/2005 - 12:18pm

Looking at this idea from another way, why not kill everyone over the age of 21 so we can actually give our cuntry another chance?

Noodle - 22/5/2005 - 2:13pm

Or why not execute every person living on an estate. After all it's only peasants who do anything remotely wrong. Just think of all the money we'd save from not having to give out benefits. Kill all the disabled as well! And old people! And babies! They're the ones bleeding this fine Anglo-Saxon country of ours.